


Timelines

by sinisterkid92



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Flynn does some explaining, Post 1x10, Rittenhouse, obviously spoilers for 1x10, the capture of benedict arnold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 13:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9125077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinisterkid92/pseuds/sinisterkid92
Summary: When Lucy and Flynn arrive back in 2016 after The Capture of Benedict Arnold (1x10) Flynn shows Lucy her journal.A story of how he got her journal, and a little more of what's in it, and why Flynn took Lucy.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Isn't this a neat new show? I think the dynamic between Lucy and Flynn is intriguing so I wanted to put them together and have them talk this issue over. Can't wait for these two weeks to go by so we can see the aftermath of Flynn kidnapping Lucy and what that means. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy this!

A few seconds ago she was in 1780. It took a few more seconds for her to orient herself, to recognize the signs of 2016 again. The computers, the buzzing of electricity that she never noticed before time traveling. She could see it through the opened door of the mothership, but she remained in her seat. Motionless. Watching as Garcia and his crew jumped out of the ship, Flynn with the pace and posture of an angry bull towards a computer station. 

”Check the computers,” Flynn barked out before glaring in her direction. A pointed glare that glued her further into her spot. Just moments before she had been shouting Wyatt’s name, but there was no name to call out now. She had no idea how to react to being kidnapped in the 18th century and being brought back to her own time. Maybe she should’ve tried to get her hands on a phone, but she didn’t trust her legs to carry her.

All the adrenaline that had been pumping through her veins had depleted. Her heart was no longer pounding through her chest, she could even catch her breath. So she watched instead, studying them, taking in the details she could from the hatch in the mothership. There wasn’t anything about the place that stood out to here. It was nondescript warehouse, and the few windows were just under the ceiling, only revealing the dark sky above. She wondered if anything had changed in the world outside this warehouse, if there were more siblings missing for people who didn’t even know they were supposed to have one. If there were movies she never knew had been made, history anecdotes she would’ve known if this was her actual timeline. The one she got her degrees in. 

A part of her was thankful for Garcia Flynn and his murder of David Rittenhouse. The time between where she had been forcefully taken from the room in the direction of Rittenhouse’s bedroom, and the moment she heard the gunshot and the scuffle of fights in the room she’d just left had been horrible. Contemplating the bleak future she was facing, and the time she was in that would offer her no refuge were she to escape, had sunk a lead weight in her stomach. Then she heard them. It gave her a reason to fight back, to know that she could face another future than this one. So she tore herself from the man that held her tight, took the nearest heavy object her hands could grasp, and swung it at the head of him. He went down easier than she had thought he would.

She’d seen the death of Rittenhouse. Seen him go down mid sentence like a deck of cards. Folding over with a hole in his chest. 

That was where her thankfulness ended. It was a juxtaposition against the rage and fear she’d felt for the young, helpless, and impressionable child that she’d shielded with her own body. In that moment she wasn’t only shielding John, but the very future she wished to return to. However messed up, however terrible it was, it was a life she wanted and needed. One where history was as close to what it used to be, where her sister had been born, and she was supposed to become a tenured professor. It was also her mother was dying in lung cancer, where Jessica was dead, and Rittenhouse was threatening the lives and wellbeing of Rufus and his family. But it was her own family there, her sister cowering behind her in the form of a child. Defenseless, innocent of the inhumanity and cruelty that life was exposing him to. A child begging to live. 

She wasn’t a mother, had never even come close to being in a nurturing position in her life. As a teenager she had tried to babysit her younger sister to get in her parent’s favor. There had been a concert she wanted to go to. It had been the worst experience in her teenage life, and for the decade following it she had sworn she’d never be a mother. But that moment she felt more like a mother than she ever had. As she pleaded with Flynn she felt the burden of all the mothers in history before her weighing down on her. The words of agent Christopher were like an echo in her head. The burden of protecting them from losing what she and her mother lost, of others never knowing what they lost, of children they had tucked into bed in other timelines. How could she return with the USB-drive and give it to her, confessing her inability to save that one aspect of history for a single time jump?

It was with a mother’s love she put herself between the bullet and John Rittenhouse. With a million mothers’ love. She couldn’t let him do it. Not to a child who had yet to do wrong, not when history had proven so flexible and malleable under their clumsy thumbs. 

”Get out here,” Flynn said with a bark in his voice. His jaw flexed in barely contained anger as he slammed shut the drawer he had put his gun in. ”You have to see this.” 

She fumbled with the harness she was still locked in. It was easier to unlock than the one in the lifeboat. Less bulky, easier to buckle and unbuckle quickly. Flynn had locked her in it in barely a moment when they boarded the ship, saving them the seconds it could have taken Wyatt and Rufus to rescue her like a damsel in distress. The thought had her huffing. Not exactly an inspiring way to go, was it? Being captured and needing rescue by men in shining armor. Escaping from this situation herself wasn’t going to be easy, if at all possible. Even if Flynn had his gun locked away his men still wore theirs. 

Walking slowly towards the computer station where Flynn stood she looked over the place. There was little beyond what she had seen from the door of the ship. The warehouse was chilly but dry. There was a draft from somewhere leaking in the cold outdoor air. She could make out cars, but not license plates, or the model. From where she stood they looked black, but they could just have easily been blue. 

”Stop stalling,” Flynn said, rolling his eyes at her as she was obviously casing the place. ”I have something to show you.” She rounded the table to see the headline of the morning’s newspaper. It was the same one she had read that morning at her mother’s kitchen table. 

”I don’t get it,” she said. The headline was word for word what she remembered it, the photo looked the same too. She didn’t have photographic memory, but it was a new enough memory to be able to recall it. 

”Nothing has changed,” Flynn huffed, taking out Lucy’s journal and thrusted it into her hands. She grabbed at it, fumbling to get a grip of it. ”Read your own words and you’ll see how terrible Rittenhouse is.”

”How did you get my journal anyway?” She flipped a page open to scan her own handwriting. It was about the space race, the moon landing that they had made sure would happen just the other week. Rittenhouse had their hands all over the moon landing if what she read was correct, it had given them the money, power, and tools to find their way into science projects all across America. Eventually weaseling their way into Connor Mason’s work with the time machine. 

”That’s not important.” Flynn waved her question away, looking like he was moments away from tapping his foot to get her to hurry up with her realization. 

”It’s my diary, I think knowing how you got a hold of something _that_ personal is important.” She flipped through it again, past places she’d already been to something she didn’t already know. Her entries jumped in time, following no chronological order that could give her an overview. She’d obviously filled this as she learnt more and more, but when and where she didn’t know. 

”If time travel exists in 2016 it exists in the future too.” He grabbed it out of her hand as she caught sight of a page reading 9/11. It didn’t matter. She could never travel to 2001 anyway. ”It was given to me.”

”You expect me to believe that someone in the future, who hasn’t been born in 2016, traveled back in time to give you that instead of changing history themselves?” She scoffed. ”Why would they trust you with that job?”

”Because it was a child, not an adult.” He flipped to the page he’d wanted her to read.  
 _It is becoming more and more clear that none of us are safe anymore. Not Rufus, not Wyatt, not me, not our families or anyone we work with. Rittenhouse only goal with the time machine is to go back in time and take out their enemies and anyone who’ve done them harm before they’ve had a chance to do anything. Their end-goal is just more power. The only way to ensure that people will remain free with our liberties intact is to eradicate Rittenhouse from history. They are rooted so deep, are so interwoven with the history of America, that I don’t know if this is possible. I don’t know if we can save ourselves without losing all that we know, risking a far worse tyranny than the hidden shadows of power that is Rittenhouse._

The page beside it had a newspaper clipping glued to it. It was a picture of herself, Rufus, and Wyatt standing outside Mason Industries. There were smiles on their faces, but not the joyous smiles she’d seen on them. It was the dutiful smiles of people playing a role. Above the picture was a headline, and judging by the size of it this was just a blurb in the paper it’d been published in.

_A professor, a scientist, and a soldier walk into a lab - a new perspective on history walks out._

The content of the article was gone, only the headline and photo was left. The photo text underneath was nearly cut through, but she could still read it. Lucy Preston 38, Wyatt Logan 37, and Rufus Carlin 34. It was 5 years from now, and she could see subtle changes in her hairstyle and clothing, but nothing else revealed the passing of time to her. Underneath the photo it said in sloppy handwriting _This never happened in new timeline, did Rittenhouse erase it?_ The question mark was underlined three times, the lines nearly cutting through the paper. 

”A child delivered this to you?” The diary shook in her hands, and she looked down at the photo of herself from a timeline that happened but then disappeared. Just like her sister had. 

”Their mother was a Rittenhouse member, by birth. She was a reluctant member, disagreed with their ways of handling things. The child returned to the future after leaving this, god knows to what he returned.” Flynn shook his head. ”If we had killed Rittenhouse in the cradle like we were planning to then none of the killing, none of the violence would be necessary! You chose a timeline where a child risked losing everything and for what? To save history? To restore the terrible things that happened to others so you can get your sister back?”

”We don’t know what America would look like if we changed history, and what about the world? Who knows maybe nazi Germany would be ruling Europe now?” She flipped a page of the diary only to have it torn out of her hand. ”What is it you don’t want me to see? If you’re so convinced I’m going to be persuaded to side with you why am I not allowed to read more?”

”Because,” he hissed, then took a deep breath. ”Knowing your own future is never a good thing.” He pocketed the diary. ”And until I know for sure you understand what I’m fighting for, and unless you are fighting alongside me, you cannot know where we’re going next.”

She paused. ”The diary… it’s your map?” 

”I’m here to show you the terrible things that Rittenhouse is responsible for.” Flynn evaded her question and looked over at his men. ”You need some rest. Tomorrow we’re heading out again.”

”Wait, we’re time traveling?” Flynn looked at her as if she was a child asking the same question over and over again during a ten hour car journey.

”As I said, I will _show_ you what you’ve done.” Once again he charged away like an irate bull, yanking a car door open. ”Let’s go Lucy!”


End file.
